Client Spotlight: When the Worst Happens to a Parent with James Miles

So welcome, James, to the Wealth Wisdom Financial Podcast. So glad to have you here. Tell tell our listeners a little bit about your back story, what a little bit about your career, what brought you to where you are today?Sure.

So my name is James and I have a family. I'm married and have four children. And the ages currently range from 2018, 14 and 13. My 18 year old is graduating, so that'll be exciting and going off to college next year. I have been as far as you know back my back story with finances, I've always been interested in in investing and learning more about money. As with many people, you don't learn about that in school. And my father was always very, very risk

adverse. His advice always to me was don't risk any more than you can afford to lose, which makes sense to a certain degree. But I've also found over the years that. And one of the quotes that I really like is from Robert Kennedy, who says those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly. And so those kind of two counter contradict each other, right? So if you're not willing to risk risk at all, then it's very unlikely that you're going to to great, you know, exceed expectations

to to a large degree. And there's many examples of that. Bill Gates quit college, right?He risked. A career and you know, same with a lot of the large companies that that were created, the billionaires that that are currently there, they didn't, they didn't put all their money in a 401K and slowly let it, you know, average with the S&P over the course of 30 or 40 years. So as I was learning more about investing and learning more about 401 KS and IRAS.

I started to question kind of that traditional wisdom as to, you know, how you grow wealth. And I went down several different paths.

My first investing experience happened to be with a gentleman who would buy companies and then sell them, sell percentages. To individuals and they could then sit on the board. He went to prison for 17 years for fraud. So that was kind of my first experience into investing and and that's really where my dad was like, don't invest more than you can afford to lose. I'm like, well, I kind of went into debt for that one. So but that's all learning and so I I wouldn't

say that I lost on that. I I learned a lot on how to. Really kind of analyze and and verify and that kind of thing. So as with everyone or most everyone right, I I get my jobs and I just put money into 401K's and and IRAS and try and find you know the right mix of mutual funds to invest in and hopefully that grows and.

After moving a couple of jobs, enrolling 401 KS and taking a look at the value and the balances, I I realized that after 10 or 15 years, the value of the 401 KS was basically what I had contributed. There really was no growth over that time frame and I didn't, I didn't really put a whole lot of confidence in that and so. I'd also dove into Dave Ramsey and you know cut up the credit card and tried to to

do that as well. And you know as many as there are people out there that you know come on his show and you know that they you know they've got freedom from debt. I realized it wasn't it wasn't practical to do that and to have enjoyment in life and. And you know, my wife is very big on experiences and it was really hard to be like, OK, we need to eat beans and rice and rice and beans and and put all this extra money into a

401K that will grow. At the time he was saying, and I don't know what his lies are now, but at the time he was saying, you know, mutual funds would grow, an aggressive mutual fund would grow 12% year over year. And I knew that not to be true because. I was seeing the performance of these mutual funds and and even before the 2008 crash they weren't performing at 12% year over year. And so do you do your own math on that or just just to decide how did you calculate and figure out some of that?

Well, I I knew that from my the performance of my own 401K. You know, I look at my 401K that had been invested in these aggressive growth mutual funds over the course of my my career to that point. And again it they showed that I was only making what you know, the the value of the mutual funds or or the 401K was only increasing by the amount that I was contributing. So

something had to have happened to to that growth that was happening. In that mutual fund. So at in 2016 I I switched. Well, 2018 I switched jobs and in that transition process I realized that I really didn't want to be working a nine to five. I wanted to find ways of investing. And I had, I had invested. I called myself an accidental landlord. I would buy homes and then we would move, but I wouldn't sell them and we would just rent them. And that gave me experience in investing and and

landlording. And I realized that with the first one. It was in an area that wasn't great and since I bought it as a residence, not as an investment, I hadn't done all the due diligence. The the cost was exceeding the value that I was getting from the rents. So it may look like it cash flowed month to month, but after turning it over and having to pay for repairs and all that kind of stuff, by the time I sold it, I had a

paper profit. But all the expenses and then of course the IRS clawing back, the the depreciation really did not come out ahead on that. And that was just that it was a terrible investment, right?I didn't buy it correctly. So I did buy a home in in a really wealthy area here. I bought like

the smallest home in the whole town. And that I actually purchased well and it was an area that was going to be developed and so over lived in it for several years and then rented it and took about 10 years, 12 years before it was finally sold to a developer and I was able to make 6 figures on that property. So that worked out really well. But it was at that point, you know, I made the money on that home and I was transitioning jobs. I needed to find a way to invest. How did I want to invest

that money?And as I was looking into to various options, I was just seeing that stock market wasn't, you know, long-term stock market wasn't necessarily the way to go. And obviously, you know, I already figured sticking money into an IRA and 401K didn't really seem to meet my needs. So I took that money and actually cashed out my my IRAS. And invested it into building a memory care residential assisted living

home. So I've been in the process of doing that and that's kind of where the Robert Kennedy quote kind of drove me to do that. It was like, should I cash in my my 401 KS?Should I do this for this business?And and I was like, yeah, that, you know, that's me. Daring to fail miserably. So I felt that that was a good step to do and my faith has a huge impact on on what I do on my day-to-day decisions and long-term decisions. And there there was a time where things were a little rough and

so I just. Remember sitting in church one day and just being like, you know, God, what do you want me to do? And it's kind of the first time and only time I've ever really felt that I heard an audible voice saying keep doing what you're doing, just keep moving forward. And so I just, I've, I've kept pursuing that the memory care home. It currently is in the stage of half built because I got halfway through and got shut down by the neighbor who sued me and it's

gone through. Court of Appeals. And now we're asking for a transfer to the Supreme Court to follow up with that, that process. So again, you hear all of the stories about successful people and you know, we all think that it's going to be a straight

line. And I don't know if you've seen the meme of, you know, what I thought success looked like and what it actually looked like, right over the hills into the, you know, through the swamps and passing the alligators. So that's. Where I'm at and what I'm doing with that and I don't in in that whole process, I don't know where I came

across Bank on Yourself. I know that I've heard in various investing association meetings or conferences that I've been at, I've heard different individuals talk about. Infinite banking, whole life, life insurance, dividend paying with non-direct recognition. And it probably took four or five times of me coming across it to really start to look into it a little bit further. And

I don't know which came first. I don't know if I found the Bank on Yourself book first or if I found the Not Your Average Financial podcast first, but. Those two obviously are are related and so I ended up reading the book, listening to a few of the podcasts and thinking, you know, I think, I think this

is probably where I need to go. And I had a lot of that money from from the house that I had sold and thought this would be a great opportunity to kind of get started with that one of the other techniques that I had used. Was getting a HELOC as my mortgage, so refinancing the house as a HELOC and I had that kind of integrated as my checking account. And so anytime I'd get paid, I'd put the money into the HELOC and then I would use that money.

And the reason for that was I always saw that I I always had a balance of. 5 to $10,000 in my checking account, but it just fluctuated and and I was like what?What can I do with this money? You know, sticking in a savings account doesn't seem to be, you know, a great place for it. So I used the HELOC then to try and you know, offset a lot of the finances there or the interest charges I ended up.

Ending that because I can get a really good interest rate right before the interest rates went up and so I refinanced that. But then I also was putting all of my money into this memory care home and so I didn't really have that that fluctuation there. So I just kind of wanted to lock that in, but was looking for other ways to invest the money that I had and bank on yourself showed up and I like, I like the idea that it's

it'sBuilding a foundation. So yeah, it's not returning 12% a year, but it never loses 12% a year or 30% a year, whatever the stock market happens to do. So there's a lot less fluctuation. It's a guaranteed growth upwards. And then having the non-direct recognition loan was very similar to what I was doing with with the home and that's that's really how I explain the loans to people. Because I'm like, you know, it's like you buy your house and you have equity in

your house. You take money out of your house, you're paying the bank the interest, but you're being able to use that money and the value of your house can continue to grow. The difference is the value of your house can also go down, whereas with the life insurance policies, they don't lose value. So. So I decided to to to pursue that and and it's my it's my basis, my foundation. I've called, I call it kind of my bucket as well. So I'm trying to create bigger and bigger buckets of money.

My process don't necessarily recommend this for everyone, but because I was trying to create the biggest bucket I could, I would take money, pay the maximum maximum I could. And then immediately borrow that money back out because I needed it. I couldn't just leave it in there. So I was, I was just kind of churning using the velocity of money, I guess, to build this bucket bigger and bigger so that when I did get a windfall, I could put it all back into that and it

would be a bigger bucket. So I've got the maximum I can for the paid up additions within that. Bucket. So I've been in it since. It also sounds like you you do a lot of number crunching yourself, right?When people think that, Oh yeah, I'm just going to do this and someone else is going to manage it and it's just going to magically happen. It sounds like from your story that you had some interactions with money and with God. To say what is happening here and questioning, right. A lot of times we

don't question anything. We just say Dave Ramsey is the gospel or whatever and you're asking bigger questions, right. And then using it to grow various businesses. Some work, some didn't, right. I yeah, I don't just take. Answers at face value, you know, especially when it comes to money, because it doesn't add up. You see, again, I go back to, you know, the the billionaires that are out there. They didn't get there by doing the things that you're taught to do in school. I also worked

for several years at Charles Schwab. So I've been in finance and I know that. Brokers, mortgage brokers, not mortgage brokers, sorry, financial brokers, stock brokers, their goal is asset acquisition. That's that's what they're there for. And so they advertise and recommend what they can to acquire as much as they can and keep as much as they can for as long as they can. And I worked in the

reporting department too. And so I know that what they're looking at is total assets under management and what is the spread between what we're paying in interest and what we're receiving in interest and what we're receiving in fees. And if you think about a stockbroker, this changed slightly while I was there because the fees. From $15 a trade down to 495 and then eventually went to to 0. But they were no longer looking at what are we getting from commissions as revenue.

They were looking at what are we getting from interest rate spreads. And this was during the first low interest rate environment before they started to raise them in 2019-2020. And for every point of interest rate that Charles Schwab went up or that the the markets went up, Charles Schwab was going to make half a trillion dollars in additional. So they wanted interest rates to go up because they they could generate revenue because they have so much money under management, assets under

management. So that's so when they tell you, you know put your money in and and stick it in a mutual fund and let it sit there for 20 years. That's because they manage that mutual fund and they have that cash there. The people that they make the least amount of money on are the old people that, and this was the example when I was there, it was the older people that had AT&T stock that pays a dividend that they've held since.

The 1930s or the 1920s or whenever, you know that that they just inherited it from their father who inherited it from their father. And now they've got, you know, 10s of thousands of shares and are making thousands of dollars in dividends every month. And they call in every day asking what the stock price was. So they're costing Schwab money and they're not trading it, they're just getting payouts and that that's a cost.

So they Schwab would rather they sell that stock and buy their mutual funds.

And that's the same with all of the the the brokers. They they're not interested in people trading. They're interested in people sticking their money in a mutual fund and letting it sit there. Warren Buffett, you know, the Oracle of Omaha, that's he doesn't do that. Yeah, right. So. But I say that all to say too, that something is better than nothing. So I am very active in my money management, as you

pointed out, Brandon. There are many people that aren't and won't, and I I compare that to the oil in my car. I hate changing the oil in my car. I know how to change the oil in my car, but if I have to change the oil in my car, I'm not going to do it as regular as I can or should. And I've blown up an engine and lost the vehicle because I didn't change the oil in my car. That's a much bigger cost than me paying $75.00 for somebody else to change the oil in my car. So I

say that about finances too. If you aren't going to do anything, then it's better to do something with with mutual funds or whatever. I would say that the something that you should do would be bank on yourself first. Because at least you have a guaranteed growth there without the fees that are associated with mutual funds and you don't have that, you know, up and down. But something is

certainly better than nothing. And I in my experience at Schwab, I saw plenty of people that were doing nothing and just sitting there in in cash and there's no interest in a cash sitting in your brokerage account, so.

There's kind of that that balance there, but you know, I I do recommend that everybody should really be involved in their own finances and learn how to do it and find ways of doing it that maybe you're not going to do it regularly and that's fine, but don't just expect that the Charles Schwabs and Vanguards and Fidelity's have your best interest in mind when they're recommending you to do a. You know, fully balanced allocation in a mutual fund that they own

and manage. So thanks for sharing that James and sharing some of your backgrounds there. I was hoping you would get into that. And I guess it's been five years now since we started working together and you started implementing banking yourself for you and for your family. What what was on your mind when you were like choosing to not just have like. One thing, but to to get your family involved and to become, you know, the the person that helps your sons, for

instance, get started. And even at young ages, like what drove some of that part of it too? I wanted to provide my I wanted to provide the education for my children that I didn't get when I was growing up. So I spent. My 20s with my head in the sand, you know, really not knowing a whole lot about finances and just sticking it in the 401 KS. And then 30s is when I really started to to learn and educate myself and having to do that outside of any traditional method, right?

Listening to podcasts, reading books, going to seminars and and that kind of thing. And I want to pass that give. Onto my children and give them

a foundation and I wanted to start them out with with a a bank on yourself policy so that when they are old enough to start managing on their own, that's something that's already put in place. They've already moved past the first several year period of trying to get it to grow. So it's really. The big focus was on my oldest son.

He was get he got a job and I started with the idea of using a Roth IRA cause the idea of a Roth IRA is that it's after tax money that you put it in, then you can invest that money and grow it and again with with my. Prowess, I guess with my education, I didn't just stick that in mutual funds. I would invest that and because it was after tax contributions, anything that we put in there he could take out at any time.

So I I looked at it as like a savings account plus and we we did that for him and we also did that for for my next oldest son. And that was it what I thought was a good idea. What I have learned since is anytime the government sets the rules, it's not in your best interest. I mean, they set the rules for themselves and and that makes it and and then those rules there are to make it as difficult as possible for you. And that's really what happened with these IRAs I

did. After setting up the IRAS, I did learn about the bank on yourself. And for my oldest son, it was like, you know, he he graduated from high school and he didn't want to go to college and I was fine with that. Again, college is another one of those things that maybe started out as good intentions, but it's become blown way out of what really it's supposed to be. And so he wanted, he loved cars and so I got him a job as a mechanic and

that's what he was working on. And so he never went to college and we set up a policy for him. He wanted to be able to. He needed to buy a car. We didn't have, you know, we had too many drivers, not enough cars. And if he was using one every day, we needed to, we needed him to have his own. So we set up a policy for him to put that money in there so that he can borrow the policy and buy his own car. And that's what he did.

And then the next goal was for him to pay that back and save up for his house, which for me and what I convinced him to do was save it up for a a duplex, triplex or quad, something that he could get that was still under, you know, the government kind of subsidies. For a first time home buyer, I'm sorry, can I ask you a quick question here?Yeah,

sure. So I have a client or potential, right, that is going through and 27 and just in your own words, why would a 27 year old put into a policy, a life insurance policy versus just a savings account?He's like, why would I do that?I don't even understand. I'm borrowing for my own money and. It just doesn't make sense to me. And if you were talking to that twenty-seven year old, what would you tell him?Like, what's the logic there?

Yeah, so there's a couple of different things, especially for a twenty-seven year old. You put money in a savings account and savings accounts are growing at. They're better interest rates now. You know, in the past it was ridiculous. There wasn't any interest, but some of the interest has come. That has grown. So there seems to be a reasonable amount of interest rate in there. The Fed's going to lower interest rates again, and savings accounts are going to

go down faster than the Fed goes down. So again, the bank's not interested in paying you money. They're interested in what they can make off of your money. So if you put the money in a savings account, as soon as you use that money, it's no longer earning anything and it's gone. The bank on yourself policy, you know, I talk about or talk about the the velocity of money. It's the ability to use the same dollar over and over again.

And so if you put that money into a bank on yourself policy, if you need to buy something with it, you do borrow out of that policy. But the money is still growing. It's still the interest is still. Accruing in that policy because you didn't take the money out, it's still available and then you pay that policy back as as you're earning more money and the benefit there is there's no requirement to pay that money back. It's. Up to

you. Now obviously you want to pay it back as quickly as possible because you want to be able to use that money again for something else. Again, it's, you know, using the velocity of the dollar and the interest and dividends that you run on the policy only slightly offset the the interest that you're paying for borrowing that money. But there's no like no one's, no one's going to come repo your car because you didn't pay the loan payment that month.

You know, you're not going to lose your house because you didn't pay the mortgage payment that month. And so you really are in control of that yourself. Again, you want to be in control of your money. And I feel like these bank on yourself policies give you that opportunity. And then the other side too is if something happens, then that loan is taken care of automatically. By the policy and a 27 year old who's invested in the policy will have significantly more life

benefit for the cost. It'll be cheaper for them to get a death benefit to get a larger death benefit than if, you know, if they put that money into a savings account and then bought a term policy. That's another kind of one of those fallacies that. Dave Ramsey's and others have have said right, it's like buy term policy and invest the

rest. Well, every 27 year old I know, unless somehow they are able to do the whole fire method and and you know, save every single penny and and not not spend anything, they're not going to be able to do that because things come up, expenses come up, expenses expand to fill the amount of money that you have available. And so you're not going to continue to invest that money and rely on that term. The other thing is a term policy. If you don't die, you spent a ton of money for

nothing. You get no, you get no return on that. So my wife has a policy that's ending this year. The 20 years is up this year and we've spent $10.80 a month for the past 20 years. And we'll have nothing to show for it. I'm, you know, in that regard, I'm glad I didn't, you know, would not want to have had to have cash in that policy. But we also have a bank on yourself policy for my wife that has more death benefit and we can do more with that policy than we can or could with her term policy.

Yeah, it's a little bit more expensive, but if you start when you're younger, then there's a whole lot more that you can do. So going back to the 27 year old and and and really talking about my son to bring the story full circle is he passed away December 31st of this year and the bank on yourself policy paid out. He had almost $400,000 in value in death benefit. So the $5000 that he paid for for his car didn't have to worry about that.

It took. We just had to provide, you know, death certificate and accident report and we had the money within 3045 days. It took 60 days, almost 90 days, to get the money from his Roth 401K or his Roth IRA. I had to jump through a ton of different hoops to get that, and even now that money is stuck in a inherited Roth IRA. That we have to

hold for a total. We have to hold that for at least five years from the time that he opened it to be able to get any of that money out without having to pay any taxes or penalties on it. And we can hold it for 10 years. But there are so many rules and regulations around that, whereas with the life insurance policy, it's, you know, they sent me a check. And I cashed that check. Obviously that's not what anyone is considering or wanting to think about when they

purchase the policy. But it was such a and there's no Silver Linings, there's no blessings, but it was helpful to not have to worry about any of that. Yeah. And I remember when you called me, I think I was in the car. I called you right back. We talked for a little bit that day and I just said focus on your family, we'll start getting the ball rolling. And I've, I was glad to be there for you and your

family in whatever way I could. And we made sure, right, we were able to get you that check as quickly as we could in coordination with the life insurance company, but knowing like you had three other. Sons to be thinking about and caring for. Like a lot of people, when they think about insuring their children, they're like how morbid, you know they're not going to die for a really long time. Why would I even think

about doing that?And you know, but to the to know like your your family was able to do something beautiful to celebrate your son's life and to be a family, right?Your set shared your wife loves experiences. There, there's been some really good things that now you're able to do for your family going forward from that that, yeah, I was able to buy the buy the car, get the car, you know, loan, you don't have to worry about it.

But also like moving forward, I think looking back you'll you're really glad that you have done these things and you're continued to teach your younger sons. The importance I get pass on that financial education to them. That's probably even more powerful than the big check that you got. I was also thinking beginning. Yeah, absolutely. I guess I begin with the end in mind. You reverse engineered and we don't know the future like nobody does of when things are going to happen, right

with any of us. But a lot of times people are chasing rate of return or that they don't realize it with infinite banking and banking yourself. The chassis is life insurance. And from a biblical standpoint, it is the most biblical financial product I know out there because it protects for widows and orphans, right?That's literally what it was created for. And and a lot of times clients are like, yes, but what's the rate of return?What's this

or what's that?I'm like, well. It it's about access to cash on your terms and in the end the contract will be fulfilled in some way or another. And and so thinking about that, thinking long range and reverse engineering, knowing we still want to run a business. I still want to do things. There's things that we want to accomplish in our present life here, but we don't know when things could change and we're not going to be here tomorrow, right?

Yeah, well, even comparing that to, you know, retirement, let's say, you know nothing happens, right?And and you go into retirement and you've built up this bank on yourself policy, you know that money comes out with no strings attached. You know, my dad still has to calculate all of his RM DS and he's required to take a certain amount out cause the government wants to get their page, you know they want to get their their check.

And you know, if I my goal is to to build up a financial situation to where my retirement will be paid for by dividends, interest, rents and royalties so that it that I'm getting the lowest. Taxable income possible in my retirement, but also not having to do a lot of work for that kind of the mail mailbox money idea and then taking money out of the the bank on yourself policies as I

wish. Whether that's the supplement where I'm making other income, I I don't want to be reliant on a government defined policy or. Program. I mean it's called a 401K because that's the law number that was used. And you know we've even seen that the guy that created the 401 KS is, you know, speaking out against them now as well because it there's so much restriction on your cash and what you can do with it and how you can do it.

So that's that's really, you know, I want to be as I want to be able to control my controllables. There's a lot of things I can't control and one of the big things that you can't control with your 401K and your IRAS is what is the government going to like?They can always change the rules and there's

nothing that we can do about that. We can try and vote the people out, but ultimately it's it's up to the government and putting your trust in the government that set those rules for those those particular policies or instruments as you as you say and. I just, I don't trust my government to make the best decision for me. It is. It is interesting that they want us to be fiscally responsible. But if you look at some of that, I'm like

fiscally responsible. How the how can you manage and tell me what's fiscally responsible?Anyway, I don't want to be political, but just thinking about it. Yeah, and the day, the day that we're recording this episode, the the day before the New York Times. Yes, the New York Times published an article that says was the 401K a mistake?That's the the headline of their It's in the New York Times Magazine. And here's here's one of my

favorite quotes from this article. 401K's have arguably become another driver of the inequality that is the the defining feature of American life. And that really the only people have made money from the 401K are wealthy people who could like Max it out. They had money they didn't need to touch, you know, all those things. And the investment firms that set

them up and get all the fees. Only people that have made money off the 401K is not the average American, not the ordinary person who they're like, I don't even know if I can contribute cause I'm living paycheck to paycheck. That's what that article ended up being all about. So much more they could have shared about it, like the volatility of the stock market and all those kind of things away. But I'm I'm glad mainstream media are finally starting to see the wealth

wisdom behind, right?Like the the conventional isn't necessarily what it's all cracked up to be. Do you remember the name of the 401K originally, Amanda? Oh, it's a deferred compensation plan. Or it was something else like I remember you found it in a podcast. I don't remember what. Well, they're like it's a they're taking your compensation and deferring it into the future. It's a form of that. James, you want to jump in with

something?Oh no, I was just gonna say that when I worked at, when I worked at Charles Schwab, we would, we would always get calls from people who they were getting contributions into like a SEP IRA or or some other small business IRA. And you know, it's these 20 year old 20 somethings calling up and saying, hey,

can I have, you know, withdrawals?It's like the day, the day that the money was deposited into the account, they were taking that out because they couldn't afford to leave that money in there or they didn't think they could afford to leave that money in there. So they're taking the 20% penalty and the tax hit to take that money out because it was that much more that they could use for their living expenses.

And you know, we looked at that as they're not being fiscally responsible, they're being irresponsible with their money. But I know plenty of people that it's not a matter of being fiscally responsible or irresponsible. It's a matter of putting food on the table or being able to afford gas to get to their job. So the same applies to, you know, building a a policy, you know, you have to be able to afford. To

take that money out of your account. But I also know, and this is kind of the idea behind the profit first methodology, that if you can take that money out and you know, take it out of your paycheck early then. You don't have that income to expand your expenses to and you'll you'll live within those expenses,

those that income that you have. And that was other the other thing that I was really trying to impress upon my my children, my sons, that when they got their first job, they're going from zero to whatever money they were making.

And you know, if their paycheck was $100, they were going from zero to 100. That's, you know, an infinitely more than they were making before. So why not just? Take half of that and put it into a savings account, put it into a, you know, a policy and now they go from zero to 50, which is still infinitely more than

they were making before. And then they have that 50 that's being saved on the side for future whatever they can borrow for a car or for a house or for college, you know And so that's that's kind of how I want to to teach them as they get. Raises or they get more money, they focus on saving a good portion of it and living within that smaller amount. And I'm never expecting that they're going to be at 50%

for the rest of their lives. But now when they have zero living expenses, if they can go with 50%, then they should because I don't think they have. Any expenses that exceed what 50% of their income right now should be. And that's just not something that I learned. And so my expenses have always run up to what my income was. And once you once you've set some expenses, it's really hard to go back from that and you set a certain

expectation with your. Spouse and your children as to what you know, what their lifestyle should be, it makes it a lot harder to to pull back from that. And so you know, having a wife and and four kids and and focusing on having my wife be a stay-at-home mom. Not my choice. Like it wasn't me dictating that. I don't want anyone to think that, you know, that's what I was telling my wife she needed to do. Gave her the full choice to do that. And she chose that she wanted to

be home with the kids. And she also has always had jobs, but I've always kind of budgeted our expenses around what I make and what she has was always used for. Some of the experiences that she wanted to do, and that's why we really set up a policy for her. I I always hated spending money on some of the vacations she wanted to do because once that money is gone, it's gone. Whereas we put the money in a policy and we could borrow

against that policy to go on vacation. I still felt comfortable that we were earning interest on that money and it wasn't really gone and we still had that bucket to refill. So going back kind of full circle, you know, the other thing that my son's policy helped me do was completely fill those

buckets back up. And because I spent five years maxing that out, even though it was, it was tough and even though I was paying interest, unfortunately the way that Amanda, you set up my policies, that interest was just kind of more loan every year that was taken out of the account versus, you know, I I never had to worry about. My policies lapsing, you know, that's the big boogie word, right?

Oh, if you can't pay your your policy's gonna lapse and you're gonna lose everything, which was just another Dave Ramsey lie. I guess we're picking on him. But you know, all the other gurus are the same. They say a lot of the same things. So. So yeah, being able to do that, just build that, build that bucket up makes makes a huge difference. Yeah. So one of the things I've learned is in doing this is people want the easy

button. They want the easy button as quick as possible do it and in our and we we also are tithers and you know we we think about the law of the first fruits and saving versus investing right. But in our in our business and I want to ask you like specifically we of course specific cause you're the one here but. All right. So we do a full financial analysis. We don't just say, OK, here's a $35,000 policy, go ahead, go for it. And now I'll go do this. But but

we have to ask a lot of questions. You and your wife are probably on the call, I bet you. And it takes a lot of work for you to come in and and share and and brain dump all of this. But I think for me as a a financial professional, it is fiduciary for me to do that. What was it that you said, oh, I'm going to give all of this time and effort to Amanda to do all of this and then trust her that she knows what the heck she's doing in here and and how is that overcoming?Because you have Schwab,

Schwab experience, right?And now Amanda's a female as well, right?So what made you decide, OK, I'm ready to do this. And why is that so important for a financial professional to actually get their stuff together and ask those questions?Why is that so important to do a full financial analysis is what I'm asking. Well, you said, you know, being a fiduciary is is one of the pieces to that and I. Having been in financial, the financial warrant, I know what that

means. And it it means that you're required as a fiduciary to put my best interest above and beyond your interest. So you as a fiduciary, you cannot recommend something that will make you more money than it will, you know, make me, right. It's it's got to be, it's got to be a benefit to me. I'm also realistic to know and understand that you've got to be paid for your time. So there's going to be fees

associated with that. You know, you've got, again, everyone said, not everyone, but a lot of people like don't get the don't get the whole life policies because the only person making any money are the agents. And I know that these policies are are are not built the way that a lot of a lot of the other policies are built. But I also know that term policies make more money for insurance agents than well-built whole life policies. So and I did a lot of research on it and also so having a

full financial workup. Is important because then I know that you're creating a policy that's good for me, not just one that can make you more money, right? You you if I come in and say, you know, I have $150.00 a month that I want to put into a policy, you don't know if that's a good use of

that $150.00 or not. Or you may be able to look through that and say, well, you've got $150 that you want to put in, but we can actually create a bigger policy or a better policy if we do a little bit of the shuffling over here and and then that's going to create this policy that does XYZ. So it'll be, you know, better than what you had originally thought of or planned. The fact that Amanda is a female really didn't cross my mind at all. I

mean, I don't care about that. But one thing that I do know is that women in the stock investing world, an example of that is they are much more likely to be successful than men because they tend to follow the rules a lot better than men do. They're not as arrogant and. And bullheaded as men are when it comes to like, I can do this better myself than

following the rules. So there's a little bit of comfort there knowing that, you know, women tend to to to build the plans around the rules that you know are set in place and they're going to be more likely to do that rather than trying to deviate from the plan to try and make it look bigger or better or be bigger or better or whatever. So sorry, Brandon, I prefer Amanda. Oh, I would, I would expect. And she is a rule father in our marriage. You

might be around us apparently. I'm like, come on, you know, and I'm more male, I guess. Yeah. And it's been such a great pleasure to get to know you and your wife. I think that's been a very important part of our relationship is that it's not just you and me working together, but Tina's been involved and. And I know she doesn't, hasn't always wanted to. She's not as interested in talking about money as maybe you and I are. But to be able to build that relationship's been really

important. And I don't know that every financial professional would have taken that active of an approach to. Yeah, we got married and we decided that she'd do all the grocery shopping and I would do all the finances. And she recognizes that. You know, she needs to learn more about that as much as she doesn't want to. And so she does take a bit of a role in that and and and begrudgingly is willing to join me in things and calls and that kind of stuff. So she has a general

understanding of what's going on. But the other thing I know is that if anything ever happened to me, I know that you guys would would help her. Yeah. And we and hopefully we never have to deal with that, but we would that that's part of what we know that we're here to do, just like we did with you, with your son, even more so for her. This has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your story and being so vulnerable and honest. Really appreciate that.

Anything that you wanted to make sure to share that you didn't get a chance to or anything that you'd want to triple under score by way of wrap up. What's that nugget of wisdom? I would say that you know, get get started with your kids early. Even if you don't have a business, read profit first because it really is applicable to. Your personal financial life. Because if that money is not a part of your income, then

you're not going to spend it. And so you're more likely to to be able to save that. And you know, learn about the velocity of money. Don't stick your head in the sand. You need to figure out how to do it. Because banks, you know, well, there's a reason they have the largest buildings in every city. You know, it's not because they're trying to make you the most money that they can. And so yeah, figure out how to do it for yourself. Work with Amanda and Brandon, cause they don't have the biggest

building in Cincinnati. So and yeah, get started early. Perfect. Thanks so much. Best time to best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today. Boom. Mic drop moment. Love it. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you.